Nguyen 1 Lydia Nguyen Women Performance 30 October 2017 Performance Paper Humanity Through Horror On October 6th, I attended the play Blasted directed by Sarah Kane at the Shotgun Players theater in Berkeley. This play should have trigger warnings because it was very disturbing. There were times throughout the play where I just felt super uncomfortable and wanted to leave, but for the sake of this performance analysis I kept myself from leaving. The play touches on several themes, such as rape, war, violence, gender relations and racism. Rape, masturbation, cannibalism, and sodomy all make appearances in the course of the play. The directing, acting, costumes and the overall set were all very well executed. Although the production elements were exemplary, the play was filled with so much violence that it was overpowering that Kane’s point and central message that she wanted to convey gets lost in the countless of horrific scenes of gruesome assault. The directing of the play seemed very succinct and organized. The direction depicted a very dark and morbid atmosphere throughout the whole play. The transitions throughout was not awkward, but smooth from scene to scene. The people that were casted played their characters really seriously and I believed they each fit the role they were given. Although the play itself was performed to a good standard, I had a hard time understanding the purpose and central message of the production. I was able to get the aggressive sexual tension, but the setting was very confusing. The physical location that I got to see was clear, but the time and place that the play occurred did not come to mind at all. There were a lot of scenes where I did not understand why the characters were acting the way they did and I felt like I needed more background Nguyen 2 information. In terms of blocking, my line of sight to see how the actors bled was perfectly blinded. I was really surprised at how that was done and what they used to do that. The acting was believable and like the directing, it was at a good standard. During the play, all the actors were loud and audible. There was a variety of different actions that they did such as oral sex, sexual violence, and assertion of dominance from two different actors. The actors portrayed feelings of guilt, shock, anger, and so much more with such ease. Even though I could not understand the central message, I was still able to capture the mood of the play from the actors. Out of the three characters, Cate is the was the most interesting. She started off being a shy and fragile girl whose character was taken advantage of, but despite what happened to her she was still able to feel compassion. Cate was able to overlook the assault that Ian disgustingly did to her and by the end of the play fed and comforted him. For this reason, I thought that Cate was the most interesting and most appreciable actor. The actor that played Cate was able to show me how fragile Cate was right from the beginning. Her stuttered speech as well as quick loss of focus from simple provoking helped me realize her uneasy mental state. The costumes were appropriate and believable. I liked how Ian was dressed up in a dress shirt and slacks, it helped support his journalist character. The soldier’s costume was even more believable due to his use of props especially the gun. He also had a much more rugged look with dirt on his face compared to the other characters which sold his soldier character even more. One “costume” or prop that they used which I found believable was the blood from Cate’s leg as well as blood from Ian’s eyeball. I was not able to tell where the blood came from and when combined with the acting, it looked as if the characters were actually bleeding. Nguyen 3 The set was much more detailed than I expected. The hotel room was lit to a real life expectation and the transitions made very good use of the sounds as well as darkness. The sound was set to a loudness that brought out the anticipation and tense environment of the play. One part of the set that made it more compelling was how the hotel room simulated an explosion. There was dirt that was sent flying, loud booms, and even a flickering of light to fully sell the effect. Even towards the end of the play, there was water coming from a certain spot in the hotel room which combined with the raindrops sound to help create the illusion of raining. The stage was first set at a perfectly normal hotel room. It was created so that the audience was able to see a bed to the left and a sofa with a coffee table on the right. In between the two was a doorway with no door that lead to a hallway. In this hallway that the audience couldn’t see, the left path lead to the entrance to the hotel room and the right path led to a bathroom. The room transformed after the explosion occurred. The wall that was the hallway collapsed towards the audience allowing the characters to step over to escape the room. That stepping over of the wall was a great use of the arrangement to better convey the status of the room. Also another good use was when Ian climbed into the floorboards. Although the room changed, it only allowed the performers to use it even better and in a more convincing matter. The house was filled with an older audience, majority of them were caucasian. I would guess their age to range from late thirties to early fifties. There was an even distribution of males and females, but predominantly caucasian ethnicity. The mood was as tense as the play because there were times where people let out gasps when they were shocked and in awe. People were also covering their mouths and in some cases, some people also laughed. When I noticed others responses, it did not really affect me. There were no distractions as the play just went from scene to scene. Nguyen 4 In conclusion, Blasted is a play you can’t really like or hate. It’s by far one of the most intense and brutal plays I have ever seen and probably ever directed. It is so gory that it will perplex your mind and force it to react. Even though Kane’s central message was not clear to me, I am sure the message that she was trying to convey must’ve been powerful. It takes a lot of thinking to get through this play, and is an eye-opener that makes you gasp and wince in many scenes.
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